Instagram Pauses Efforts to Develop Stand-Alone Instagram Kids App

Things are not quite a “Teenage Dream” at Instagram, as the Facebook-owned photo- and video-sharing network kicked off the work week by putting its Instagram Kids stand-alone application on hold and issuing its rebuttal to a damning story earlier this month in The Wall Street Journal. On hold Instagram confirmed in March that it was developing a separate stand-alone app for kids under 13, which is the minimum age for users of its flagship app, with then-vice president of product Vishal Shah saying at the time, “I’m excited to announce that going forward, we have identified youth work as a priority for Instagram and have added it to our H1 priority list. We will be building a new youth pillar within the community product group to focus on two things: Accelerating our integrity and privacy work to ensure the safest possible experience for teens; and building a version of Instagram that allows people under the age of 13 to safely use Instagram for the first time.” Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said in a Newsroom post Monday that work on Instagram Kids is being paused to allow more time for the platform to work with experts, parents and policymakers and “demonstrate the value and need for this product,” adding that Instagram will continue to develop opt-in parental supervision tools for teens. He added in a series of tweets, “Us pausing doesn’t change the status quo. U13s are getting phones, misrepresenting their age and downloading 13+ apps. YouTube and TikTok saw this happening and made u13 products, we were doing the same.” Mosseri continued, “This experience was never meant for kids. We were designing an experience for tweens (10 to 12 years old), and it was never going to be the same as Instagram today. Parents approve tween accounts and have oversight over who they follow, who follows them, who messages them, time spent, etc. But the project leaked way before we knew what it would be. People feared the worst, and we had few answers at that stage. Recent WSJ reporting caused even greater concern. It’s clear we need to take more time on this.” He said in the Newsroom post that more tools to help parents “meaningfully shape their teen’s experience” on Instagram will debut in the coming months, and he pointed to anti-bullying features the platform already introduced, including Restrict, which enables people to avoid unwanted interactions with other users; Hidden Words, which helps people block potentially offensive direct message requests; Limits, which lets users automatically hide comments and DM requests from people who don’t follow them or recently began following them; and its move in July to have people under 16 in the U.S. and under 18 in certain countries who join the platform defaulted into private accounts. And Instagram head of public policy Karina Newton said in a blog post earlier this month that the platform was addressing the issue of negative body image by exploring ways to prompt people repeatedly looking at the types of content that can trigger it to look at different kinds of content instead. Negative body image Negative body image was also one of the key pillars in the WSJ story by Georgia Wells, Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman, based on internal Facebook and Instagram documents they obtained. They wrote, “For the past three years, Facebook has been conducting studies into how its photo-sharing app affects its millions of young users. Repeatedly, the company’s researchers found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls … The company’s research on Instagram, the deepest look yet at what the tech giant knows about its impact on teens and their mental well-being, represents one of the clearest gaps revealed in the documents between Facebook’s understanding of itself and its public position.” The documents obtained by the Journal included focus groups, online surveys and diary studies conducted in 2019 and 2020, as well as “large-scale surveys” of tens of thousands of people, pairing user responses with the company’s own data on time spent on Instagram and what people saw while on the platform. The Journal quoted slides from presentations on Facebook’s internal message board in 2019 and 2020: “32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves.”“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.”“Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” The WSJ also quoted one presentation finding that among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of users in the U.K. and 6% of those in the U.S. traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram. Facebook vice president and head of research Pratiti Raychoudhury addressed those findings in a lengthy Newsroom post Monday. She wrote, “When we take a step back and look at the full data set, about 1% of the entire group of teens who took the survey said they had suicidal thoughts that they felt started on Instagram. Of course, even one person who feels that this started on Instagram is one too many. That is why we have invested so heavily in support, resources and interventions for people using our services. In addition, some of the same research cited by the Journal shows that 38% of teenage girls who said they struggled with suicidal thoughts and self-harm said Instagram made these issues better for them, and 49% said it has no impact.” The WSJ cited a deep dive by Facebook into body image issues by teen girls in 2020 in which Instagram was compared to other platforms, and the company noted at the time that TikTok “is grounded in performance,” while Snapchat’s filters “keep the focus on the face.” Meanwhile, the body and lifestyle are key focuses of Instagrammers. The Journal said one study of teens in the U.K. and U.S. found that over 40% of those who used Instagram and reported feeling unattractive said those feelings began on the app, and the same was true for roughly one-quarter of those who reported feeling “not good enough.” One Instagram manager explained in the documents obtained by the WSJ, “Teens told us that they don’t like the amount of time they spend on the app, but feel like they have to be present. They often feel ‘addicted’ and know that what they’re seeing is bad for their mental health, but they feel unable to stop themselves.” Raychoudhury responded that teen girls who experienced 11 of the 12 issues in the presentation referenced by the Journal were more likely to say that Instagram made these issues better vs. worse, with body image as the glaring exception, clarifying that one in three teenage girls who said they were experiencing body image issues reported that Instagram made them feel worse, not one in three of all teenage girls, and adding that of those struggling with body image issues, 45.5% said Instagram did not make it either better or worse, while 22% said using Instagram made them feel better. Not just girls Facebook research in 2019 examined by the Journal also found that 14% of boys in the U.S. said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves, and 40% of teen boys surveyed in the 2020 report on body image said they experience negative social comparison. Raychoudhury countered, “What the study also said was that 50% of U.S. and 36% of U.K. teenage boys (who use Instagram and filled out a survey) say they feel better about themselves after using Instagram, including 18% of U.S. teenage boys saying they felt “much better.” In fact, on 12 out of the 12 issues—such as eating issues, loneliness, anxiety and sadness—teenage boys who said they experienced some of these challenges were more likely to say that Instagram made these issues better vs. worse.” Removing like counts “Project Daisy,” Facebook’s test of removing like counts from Instagram posts, did not have much of an effect, the Journal reported, but Facebook proceeded with the feature’s rollout in May after senior executives told Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that doing so could make them look good by appearing to resolve the issue. According to the WSJ, a slide presented to Zuckerberg in 2020 said, “We didn’t observe movements in overall well-being measures,” but in discussions about how to present their findings to the CEO, Facebook executives wrote, “A Daisy launch would be received by press and parents as a strong positive indication that Instagram cares about its users, especially when taken alongside other press-positive launches.” Congressional hearing Raychoudhury said in her Newsroom post that the company wanted to issue these clarifications prior to Facebook global head of safety Antigone Davis’ appearance before a Senate Commerce Subcommittee Thursday. She wrote, “In addition to putting specific findings in context, it is also critical to make the nature of this research clear. This research, some of which relied on input from only 40 teens, was designed to inform internal conversations about teens’ most negative perceptions of Instagram. It did not measure causal relationships between Instagram and real-world issues. These documents were also created for and used by people who understood the limitations of the research, which is why they occasionally used shorthand language, particularly in the headlines, and do not explain the caveats on every slide.” Why go on? While all of this controversy would seem to indicate that Instagram would be safer to move on from initiatives focused on younger users, two slides quoted by the Journal indicate why the platform will continue to press on: “Instagram is well positioned to resonate and win with young people.”“There is a path to growth if Instagram can continue their trajectory.”